D.C. Police Undercover Outed After Years of Spying

Washington D.C. Police Officer Nicole Rizzi presented herself to anti-sweat shop student activists as “Missy” sometime in 2009. Strangely “Missy” seemed very committed and even attended poorly publicized protests but seemed not to know any participants. “Missy” was revealed to be police officer Nicole Rizzi when Lacy MacAuley, a D.C. area activist checked out her real life, but recently deleted twitter profile @snufftastic. The account featured 8,000 plus tweets about working as an undercover police officer, but stupidly contained both a photo and a first name!

After some internet searching numerous other social personal profiles were uncovered including Tumblr, Instagram, Facebook, WordPress and Yfrog, some of which are still accessible to the public. On Monday a lawsuit was filed by the United Students Against Sweatshops (USAS) against Rizzi, the city of Washington D.C., and D.C.’s mayor. A 2004 law passed by the D.C. Council severely restricts police from infiltrating advocacy and activist groups.

Rizzi didn’t limit her spying to labor / anti-sweat shop demonstrations, but also was spotted at environmental anti-tar sands protests. One of her later tweets from July 30th was “Fucking kill me, job. Seriously, This is not worth any amount of money.” To her we say D.I.Y..